The virus was building again. Cases were rising, there were hundreds more every day. Schools were closed again—not just schools, everything was shut, and lockdown was stricter this time. Cleo’s dad, who was a restaurant manager, lost his job. Augie’s mum, who worked in a university, lost hers too. Even Lolly stopped going to gardening jobs. The two of them wore masks even to walk the dogs. Lots of people had died, mostly other people’s grandparents.

Every day was slow, but Harper’s final year at Riverlark was falling through time like dry sand.

The badge was still on top of Cleo’s drawing. Harper never slept in the dark any more. Now, whenever she woke in the night, she read a book. It usually sent her back to sleep, eventually.

For a Saturday-night treat, Lolly made her famous cricket-ball veggie burgers: very round, and bright red from the beetroot. Lolly didn’t believe in takeaway unless it was a cone of chips at the beach. But she believed in homemade chips stacked high like a bonfire, glistening with salt crystals.

‘Your mum and dad are calling soon,’ said Lolly with her mouth crammed. Harper took a huge bite and didn’t reply. Little things reminded her of Liz and Larry, and they were like pressing a bruise: pulling the freshly washed clothes out of the washing machine; Lolly brewing coffee; the beginning of Larry’s favourite TV show; an old rollerskate wheel on Lolly’s shelf of curiosities. Liz always talked about how much she loved skating when she was a teenager and that it was something she’d love to do with Harper, but they’d never got round to it.

Harper was no longer sure that everything would work out. The pandemic had changed the present, but, worse, it had taken hold of the future.

‘Earth to Harper, come in Harper,’ said Lolly. ‘How are those glasses going, not giving you headaches are they? You’re wearing them more these days.’

‘They’re good, so light I forget I’m wearing them.’

‘Good. Eat up or I’ll steal your chips.’

Harper took a chip in her fingers while her mind turned to the day Lolly had given her the glasses and accidentally pricked her skin with the cadet badge.

And the poppy-shaped bloom of blood on her T-shirt.

And the face—or, when she dared to think it, ghost—in the library.

For more than a hundred days—days so stretchy and slow it was hard to believe they had the same number of hours in them—Harper was stuck at home with no way of finding out more about the soldier boy.

She read books from the shelves in her room. She liked the Agatha Christies because they stuck to the point. She didn’t like books with page after page about fields. She got through a stack of novels that Liz probably wouldn’t approve of, and she found where the sex bits were in some of them. Well, this was remote learning, she had to use what she had.

Cleo found some of her sisters’ old books and flicked through them to find the kissing scenes. Harper and Cleo exchanged emails every few days where they’d copy the funniest lines from their books. Cleo said that she hoped she’d be a cool granny like Lolly and let her grandkids read romance novels if they wanted to.

Harper turned twelve.

Lolly made her such a huge birthday cake that they ended up throwing half of it away. Harper left a piece outside Angus’s door with a note that said Dear Angus, hope you enjoy, from Charlotte (number 3). She didn’t show Lolly. Angus posted a note back, which said Dear Charlotte, that piece of cake made my day. Harper intercepted it just in time.

Liz and Larry sent her a generous e-book voucher, and she got another one from her grandparents in England. Thanks to the vouchers and the wi-fi from next-door, Harper had downloaded twenty ghost novels and four non-fiction books about the paranormal in one go. She was doing research: people who believed in ghosts said the ghosts were trapped and needed help to leave. They were often connected to special places or objects. Sightings of them varied from wispy shapes to realistic human forms.

When Harper read novels about ghosts, they felt more real. Some of the non-fiction didn’t sound believable. She’d stop thinking that she’d seen a ghost and decided it was a mind-trick, a light trick, hormones, stress, the virus.

She went on like that. Believing, and then not believing; trying not to read the ghost stories at night because they might keep her awake, but sometimes she was so caught up in one that she did it anyway.

Other nights, she didn’t read at all. She imagined kissing, instead. She’d put her thumb and forefinger together, close her eyes and press them onto her lips. It didn’t feel like anything. Imagining was better. There was no one she wanted to kiss, but it’d be useful to know what it was like so she didn’t have to worry about it.

Liz and Larry started sending gifs every few days instead of long emails. The pictures were usually something like two adult elephants and a baby elephant with their trunks curled around one another. Harper preferred it, in a way, but she’d built a sort of wall so her real feelings couldn’t get out. One day she’d have to take it down, and maybe that would be hard, but for now it helped.

She thought about the boy in the library every day. Every day for more than a hundred days.

Was the cadet badge his? Had it stayed in place lately because it was where he wanted it to be, alongside Cleo’s drawing? Had it really been the thing that had hurt Corey and Briar? Did that make it her fault, somehow?

Had it done other things that she didn’t even know about?

She couldn’t get him out of her mind.